Curriculum head warns against axing religion

By Michael Bachelard

May 29, 2011 — 12.00am

THE man in charge of Australia's national curriculum insists there is no problem with the way religious instruction is taught in Victoria, and warns that any moves to axe religion classes could drive parents out of the public system and into private schools.

Professor Barry McGaw, the chairman of the national curriculum authority, told The Sunday Age: ''I don't see anything wrong with a special religious instruction that operates precisely on [the current] grounds. If we deny any place to religion in public education and wish to make it entirely [secular], we are actually basing it on a particular world view.

The soon-to-be-introduced national curriculum may not include a religious education subject.Credit:Reuters

''And the problem with that is that religious parents might opt out of the public school system, and that would not be a good thing.''

Religious instruction classes, 96 per cent of which are Christian, involve volunteers teaching the doctrine of particular religions for 30 minutes per week in state primary schools. The program has become controversial, particularly since Evonne Paddison, the leader of Christian group Access Ministries, was reported as saying it provided a ''God-given open door to children … to go and make disciples''.

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Many who oppose the lessons, including academic Anna Halafoff of the Religion, Ethics and Education Network Australia, propose an alternative - introducing a new academic subject to teach children about the world's religions as part of the curriculum.

The education union's Victorian president, Mary Bluett, agrees, saying it would be appropriate to include a subject on religion on the soon-to-be-introduced national curriculum.

Professor McGaw, however, said there were no plans to develop a separate subject on religion.

Instead, he said, he was comfortable with the current model, known as SRI, or Special Religious Instruction.

However, another curriculum expert, Tony Taylor from Monash University, who examined the Access Ministries curriculum, concluded it was ''primitively anti-educational … a crude form of missionary indoctrination that went out of style in the 1950s''.

''Mainstream Christian schools would be mortified if this kind of ludicrous, inappropriate and exasperating garbage was found in their classrooms,'' he said.

Access Ministries has defended its course partly on the basis that it has received no complaints about volunteer instructors trying to convert people.

Making religious education an academic subject on the national curriculum would require the state or federal ministers for education banding together and asking for it.

Victorian Education Minister Martin Dixon said that ''there hasn't been any push from Victoria or the other states'' for such a subject.

Mr Dixon said he supported SRI, and if religion were to be to taught as an academic subject he would prefer it to be ''as part of culture and part of language''.

Ms Halafoff said this reflected the attitude at the national level, and the Religion, Ethics and Education Network Australia was meeting with an adviser for federal minister Peter Garrett in July.

''Because the national curriculum is on the verge of being introduced, we really need to have this discussion,'' she said.